[kingu]

*drums fingers* Hmm. Return to moon, good. Using moon as stepping stone to Mars, great. Scrapping the unmanned exploration program along with every other project that doesn't support this goal, horrible.

Damn. It was sounding so good until they knock out all the unmanned programs. Cheapest things by comparison, and as Spirit shows, you get good return on the dollar.

[RightWhale]

It was sounding so good until they knock out all the unmanned programs.

Any unmanned forerunner project would have ample justification. All depends how they stretch the mission statement.